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NFC South Predictions

Emotion is a powerful thing in sports. It can carry you past a more talented opponent or it can lead you to make a penalty or mental mistake that hurts your team because you are a bit too keyed up. It can also cause you to show off a bit too much and a bit too loud, rousing a sleeping giant in the process. The New Orleans Saints experienced all three last season. They played at a fever pitch in a Superdome filled with Katrina survivors and flew to the NFC Championship Game with the NFL's best offense. It was in that game that they got bitten by the other two emotional outbursts. They turned the ball over five times and committed seven penalties, falling behind 16-0 before Reggie Bush electrified the team with another spectacular play. He punctuated an 88-yard touchdown with a somersault and we'll never know if that turned a potential Saints win into a loss but a 16-14 Bears lead became a 39-14 whalloping and New Orleans was done.

How much did the Saints learn from their emotional season? They came from nowhere last year but won't have the same benefit this year. Everyone knows who Marques Colston is and knows Bush can play at this level and they know that a trip to the Crescent City won't be the cakewalk it was in recent years. They got every break to go their way from that first Monday Night matchup that returned them to New Orleans to the win over the Eagles in the playoffs. Did it run out for good in Chicago or will the Saints pick up where they left off?

Elsewhere in the division, the Panthers disappointed after being a trendy pick for the Super Bowl before the season began. That disparity was blamed on Jake Delhomme and he'll need to play better if the Panthers are to return to the playoffs this season. The Buccaneers are no more certain about their quarterback play. Jeff Garcia was excellent as Donovan McNabb's replacement but on a team with less overall talent than the Eagles will he soar as high? Atlanta would love to have either of those problems at quarterback instead of the one that they do have.

How Will The Easts Be Won?

The two Eastern Division races were inflamed with a new fire this week thanks to sweeps of the Red Sox and Mets by their closest pursuers. The Yankees closed to within four games of Boston and the indefatigable Phillies closed the gap to two games by taking four thrillers at home. With September starting this weekend I thought I’d take a look at how the teams match up for a stretch drive.

Yankees

Jorge Posada - 371OBP/484SLG/846OPS in September vs. 379/477/856 Career

Jason Giambi - 407/556/963, 412/539/950

Robinson Cano - 387/656/1043, 345/491/836 – Cano is 415/612/1027 since the All-Star Break

Derek Jeter - 404/478/882, 389/462/851

Alex Rodriguez - 372/526/898, 388/577/964 – A-Rod has his worst totals in any month in September.

Hideki Matsui -395/491/887, 372/490/862 – Matsui’s 994 second-half OPS is 123 points higher than his career average

Johnny Damon – 338/419/757, 353/433/786

Bobby Abreu – 416/490/906, 409/501/910

Melky Cabrera has only played one September but was awful last season, posting a 661 OPS.

Red Sox

Jason Varitek – 310/384/695, 349/447/797 – Varitek’s career totals are better in the first half overall, he was injured last year in the second half and in 2005 slumped to a 514 OPS in September. He is on pace to play fewer games than in the past, however.

Kevin Youkilis – Last year was Youkilis’ only meaningful September action and, like Cabrera, his 646 OPS was dreadful. His second half OPS is 200 points below his first half output as well.

Julio Lugo – 360/427/787, 334/396/730 – Lugo’s recovered well from an awful June to post a 771 second-half OPS.

Mike Lowell – 327/463/790, 343/467/810

Manny Ramirez – 409/559/1008, 409/593/1002

Coco Crisp – 344/431/775, 329/410/739

J.D. Drew – 414/507/921, 389/498/887

David Ortiz – 368/542/910, 380/553/933

Dustin Pedroia is a rookie and only played as a call-up when rosters expanded last season.

Note To Mets: Don't Pitch To Burrell

How many times does Pat Burrell need to kill the Mets before they just accept that there is some cosmic barrier that forbids them from retiring him in a big spot. Pat the Bat hit his 40th and 41st career home runs against the Mets yesterday to help the Phillies win a wild game 11-10, sweep a four-game series and close within just two games of the front-running not-so-Amazins. His second bomb came off Billy Wagner, a double delight for Phillie fans, in the eighth. Wagner got the early call because the rest of the pen has lost Willie Randolph's favor but he was spent after 20 pitches and got ransacked in the ninth. Chase Utley got the winning hit for the fifth straight win of an unforgettable week in Philadelphia. Utley's hit capped a game that saw the Mets crawl out of 5-0 and 8-5 holes to take a 10-8 lead thanks to Philly's own shoddy relief work but they were unable to capitalize and stop the bleeding.  Perhaps some of the Met fans who made the trip down the turnpike were able to glean some coping tips from Phillie fans who remember 1964. Then again, it seems like they discussed other matters.

• The Seattle Mariners have been living a charmed life all season but if they were practicing some kind of voodoo or using some kind of mystical accompaniment to help them along it may be time to change the batteries. They lost their sixth straight, 6-5 to the Indians, on the always frustrating bases loaded walk and are now a game behind the Yankees for the Wild Card. Adding to the frustration, the walk was issued by Rick White, who relieved Eric O'Flaherty in the ninth. You might note that neither of those pitchers are J.J. Putz, better known as Seattle's best reliever. There are better lead-ins to ten game road trips but the Mariners will have to hope that sometime over the next nine their rabbits feet and horseshoes start clicking once more. Or maybe they should just cross their fingers and hope John McLaren remembers he has decent players on his team.
• The Diamondbacks ran out to an 8-0 lead in their attempt to avoid a four-game sweep by the Padres. They then gave up three runs in the seventh and three more in the eighth before turning to Jose Valverde for the save, something he called into doubt by allowing a Milton Bradley homer. But Valverde recovered and struck out the last two Padres to escape with an 8-7 win and a restored place alone atop the AL West. Chris Young struggled again for the Padres and he's probably happy to wave goodbye to a month that saw him go 0-3 and inflate his ERA by half a run.
• Chris Capuano lost his 12th straight decision, a new Brewer record, and the Cubs increased their lead to two and a half games thanks to his continued generosity. Matt Murton and Alfonso Soriano had the big strikes in the 5-4 win; two-out homers that broke a 3-3 tie in the sixth inning. Capuano didn't start the game but Manny Parra had to leave with injury after three innings allowing Capuano a chance to continue his miserable string.

(AP Photo/George Widman)

Torre Will Not Be Appeased By Chamberlain's Rules

I realize I already wrote about Joba Chamberlain and his rules today but after today's happenings there was cause for an update. Chamberlain entered the eighth inning of a 2-0 game and threw his 11th scoreless frame since getting called up to the big leagues. In the bottom of the eighth the Yankees piled on three insurance runs to push the Red Sox to the brink of a sweep and negating the need to use Mariano Rivera in the ninth. It would also seem to preclude the neccesity of using Chamberlain for a second inning since, as mentioned, the game was firmly in the Yankees pocket.

That's not how Joe Torre saw it though. Chamberlain took the mound in the top of the ninth even though the "Joba rules" state that he wouldn't be able to pitch again until Sunday. That seems like an odd choice by Torre when you remember that Ian Kennedy is starting on Saturday. Pitchers making their big league debut tend to need some relief help which means that Torre may have been hamstringing his own team by choosing to leave Chamberlain in the game for a second inning. That made me think of Kobe Bryant.

I know, it's odd to think of Torre and Kobe in the same sentance. One is long, lean, graceful and black while the other is a lumpy sexagenarian who didn't look like a professional athlete when he was a professional athlete but there's a similarity. Remember when Bryant refused to shoot in response to critics who said that he shot too much? Torre has been criticized over and over again for using relievers too often and the team's responded to that by forcing him to follow set rules about how he can use Chamberlain out of the bullpen. They clearly need Chamberlain's skills whenever he's available so by using him for a second inning today Torre's sending the same message Kobe sent when he refused to shoot, "Criticize me all you want but be very clear on one thing, I call the shots."

Complicating matters is the fact that Joba got ejected from the game for throwing two pitches high and tight to Kevin Youkilis in the ninth inning. He'd recorded one out in the inning so it's unclear when he'd be "allowed" to pitch again. It's also unclear how much Torre gives a damn about being told by other people about how to run his pitching staff. Why in the world would he keep Chamberlain in the game today unless he was sending a message to Brian Cashman and the rest of the brass about where they could stuff their Joba rules? Rules are only rules so long as somebody follows them and Torre showed us today that he isn't about to toe the line.

(AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

NFC North Predictions

The Bears ran roughshod over the division in 2006 en route to winning the NFC and falling to the Colts in the Super Bowl. Is there any reason to expect a different outcome in 2007? Well, the Bears did lose Tank Johnson from their defense and it seems likely that Lance Briggs, already unhappy with his contract, could be suspended after leaving the scene of a car accident on Monday morning. But that's grasping at straws. The Bears are head and shoulders above the rest of the division and are probably the most talented team in the entire conference for the second straight year.

A better question may be if any of the other teams are good enough to reach a winning record this time around. The Packers closed with four straight wins last year but it's hard to read much into a winning streak against teams playing out the string. That got them to 8-8 to close the season and Brett Favre is back for another run but they still have some pretty significant holes that need filling if they hope to make it to the postseason. The Lions and Vikings were two of the worst teams in football and did very little to improve themselves over the offseason. The Lions remain offensively talented and defensively limited while Minnesota works the flipside of that equation to similar lack of effect. They each have a hot rookie to keep fans from getting too upset but Calvin Johnson and Adrian Peterson aren't enough to change their team's fortunes dramatically. 

The Joba Rules

When the Yankees called Joba Chamberlain up to the big leagues they did so with a prepackaged guide on how to use the talented righthander. If he pitches one inning, you can't use him the next day and if he pitches two innings he can't pitch for two more days. He also can't enter a game in the middle of an inning because his training is as a starter and his relief experience is limited to his brief major league service.

The Joba rules are well known by now because Michael Kay won't stop talking about them during his each and every appearance. He mixes his disbelief that the Yankees are treating him with kid gloves with the wild-eyed hero worship familiar to any watcher of the YES network. Part of his disbelief has to be because he's called so many games that featured the Joe Torre rules. The Torre rules state that if a reliever has won your trust you use him as much as possible with no concern for overwork or diminishing returns and you certainly never take a chance on seeing what a younger, less established reliever might be able to offer. It's why Chris Britton never got a chance this season and why Edwar Ramirez found himself in tears after two weeks of no use left him with a heavy layer of rust.

After Kyle Farnsworth nearly blew last night's game against the Red Sox it came as no surprise that there was a call to abandon the Joba rules and take the reins off the kid. The New York Post's George King reports today that Torre has shown interest in using Chamberlain based on pitch counts as opposed to innings pitched. On the surface it makes sense, not all innings are created equal, but as Tim Marchman of the New York Sun writes that a deeper analysis shows that it might not bear any more fruit.

Seattle's J.J. Putz has been, by any metric you care to choose, the best reliever in baseball this year. Fangraphs.comcredits him with having been worth five wins; he's one of just three pitchers who has been worth more than four. Baseball Prospectus, which also tracks reliever performance this way, arrives at the same results. This is why it makes perfect sense to restrict Chamberlain; the difference between the best reliever in baseball and an average one is worth less than a win per month. No reliever, no matter how good, is going to singlehandedly mean the difference between making the playoffs and not making them during September. Baseball is a team sport.

That argument loses some strength when you are watching Chamberlain pump pitches past hapless hitters but it is ultimately a sound one. If the Yankees are assured of having Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning and get good starts from three-fifths of the rotation every time through there shouldn't be a drastic need for a change in the way you use Chamberlain. If you want to argue that they should be starting Chamberlain on Saturday instead of calling up Ian Kennedy, I'm all ears, but when the argument is for Torre to destroy another reliever the way he has done in the past it's falling on deaf ones.

NFC East Predictions

There's no shortage of questions around the four NFC East clubs and almost all of them surround the quarterback position. Can Donovan McNabb stay healthy for 16 games and reclaim an Eagles team that looked to Jeff Garcia and Kevin Kolb as answers in the last nine months? Will Eli Manning stand up tall in the pocket and become worthy of his family legacy? Is Tony Romo a long-term answer or just a better option than Drew Bledsoe? Does Jason Campbell live up to expectations and make the Joe Gibbs comeback a success in year four?

How those questions get answered will tell us how the four teams shape up come January. The Cowboys have the best defense with studs like DeMarcus Ware, Roy Williams and Terrance Newman while the Eagles have held steady with the same strengths and weaknesses that have dogged them for years. Those pros and cons have also made them a perennial playoff team, of course, and that experience means that they are in win-now mode. The same is true of the Giants who will try to save Tom Coughlin's job, again, and try to do it without their best offensive player and, maybe, their best defensive one as well. As for the Redskins it's the same old song, big-name acquisitons with big money deals trying to fit into a system that has borne little fruit.

Fool Me Once, Shame On You, Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me

Part of the reason that the NFL is suffering negative press because of Michael Vick's involvement with a dogfighting ring is because of the place of primacy he held in the league's firmament. He was a star on the field and off the field, the owner of numerous endorsements and held up as an example for the masses. Just like O.J. Simpson his affablity and ability combined to dampen the panties of sponsors and league officials alike and both groups tripped all over themselves before each guy did something that made him toxic. You'd think that those lessons or the many other falls from grace by athletes, politicians and celebrities put up on a pedestal before breaking hearts of their supporters would teach leagues that they might not want to make the upstanding nature of their players the focus of their league's message. You'd think wrong, though.

In one spot, a father sits on the sofa with his young children, reading to them from a large book while a daughter nestles her head on his neck.

In another, a man talks on the telephone to his mother — telling her “I love you” — then tells the camera that she encouraged him to play football as a child to keep him out of trouble.

In a third, a man describes his goal of going to law school and talks about how hard he worked as a student at Notre Dame.

The latest Hallmark campaign? No, the National Football League.

Concerned by growing uneasiness among fans and marketers about athletes gone wild, the league is embarking on an effort to burnish its brand image by accentuating the positive aspects of the on- and off-field lives of its players.

The NFL has commissioned these ads, featuring players like Matt Hasselbeck, Brady Quinn and Vince Young, to try and distance themselves from the Vicks and Pacman Joneses of the world. They are doing that at the same time that they are cracking down on those players to try and sell the league's image as one that won't tolerate bad behavior. Other companies are also using NFL stars in their advertising campaigns continuing a tradition without much concern for the recent spate of arrests and suspensions. Chunky Soup, a longtime NFL sponsor, is using eight players in this year's campaign and says that while they are concerned with misbehavior “it’s pretty isolated in the N.F.L. community.”

Except that it's not. The San Diego Union-Tribune first published a list of player arrests in April 2007 and found 308 of them since 2000 and that number has only grown larger this summer. I've never gotten why I'd want to buy a particular soup or candy bar because Todd Heap or Donovan McNabb says I should but that pales in relation to my lack of understanding of why a company would want to run the risk of damaging their brand. One of Chunky's new spokesmen is Jonathan Vilma of the Jets. He's a fine player but also one who shrugged his shoulders about dogfighting when word of Vick's involvement became public. That doesn't mean that he would ever break any laws himself, of course, but it also doesn't mean that he wouldn't.

Celebrating athletes for being good citizens is part of the problem. To say that being a good father or a good son is something worthy of celebration is to say that there's something fundamentally flawed with athletes that make them exceptions to the norm. I've always been wary of anyone who spent too much time talking about how great a family man they were or how much charity work they did, athletes or otherwise, and these new commercials don't do anything to change my mind. I care about how Vilma performs on the field, not how nice he is to his mother because I expect him to be nice to his mother. It's like Chris Rock said - You're supposed to be.

This is nothing new, it goes all the way back to Charles Barkley's "I don't want to be a role model" commercial for Nike. For every Curtis Martin, Cal Ripken or Dikembe Mutombo there is a Leonard Little, Albert Belle or Chris Washburn. People are people, failable and flawed no matter how fast they run or how high they jump. Tell your kids to work as hard at anything as Michael Jordan worked on basketball and tell them to refuse to surrender their dreams the way that Kurt Warner did but leave it to the things they accomplished on the court or field. Focus on the ones who behave badly off the field, make them personas non grata in the leagues and shame them into leaving or behving better. Don't turn the norm into the exception or you will only get less and less of it going forward.

Get Your Goldbricking Ass Out Of Newport

I'm a couple of days late on this but blame the lack of Marinovich coverage in the Istanbul dailies for that instead of your faithful scribe. One-time phenom USC quarterback and Raider first-rounder Todd Marinovich has found himself afoul of the law once again.

Police said Marinovich, 38, ran from officers who tried to stop him about 1:15 a.m. Sunday for skateboarding near the Newport Pier boardwalk, where skateboarding is prohibited.

He was found hiding in a carport about 1:30 a.m., police Sgt. Evan Sailor said. After searching Marinovich, police found about one gram of methamphetamine, a metal spoon and a hypodermic needle, Sailor said.

With my first child on the way I've spent a lot of time thinking about fatherhood strategies. From tying a boy's right arm behind his back to increase the likelihood that he'll be a junk-dealing southpaw to the rigid tennis schedule I've already devised for a potential daughter it's clear that I've taken more than a few hints from Marv Marinovich. Clearly the four arrests for drug violations didn't learn me any lessons nor did the all too brief time Todd actually spent playing in the pros. But believe you me the prospect of a 38-year old product of my loins spending their time skateboarding around a boardwalk in the middle of the night has scared me straight. I have a hard enough time coping with 15-year olds doing it.

The N Stands For No-Good

The National League has three strong divisional races burning as August fades away. The Mets hold a three-game edge on the Phillies, the Cubs are a game and a half up on the Brewers and two games clear of the Cardinals and four teams are within five and a half games of the West lead. Some might call it parity, others would point to a regression to the mean but I prefer the term mediocrity. Baseball Musings reports today that the Padres lead the league in run differential with a miniscule +65, which would be the lowest total since the dawn of the 162-game schedule. Meanwhile in the American League the Red Sox lead with 181 more runs scored than allowed while the Yankees are +143 and the Angels are +85. The Central contenders Cleveland and Detroit are 65 and 63 runs in the pink, respectively.

Now run differential isn't everything. The Mariners, for example, are just +14 on the season and sit at 73-57 and the Cardinals only scored 19 more runs than they allowed last year before winning the World Series. Still, it's a striking disparity between the two leagues and one that could help explain why the Senior Circuit has won just four of the last 11 titles.

Something similar is shaping up for the NFC in the pending football season. A cursory look at the teams in that conference finds no contenders poised to dominate the league with the efficiency of the Patriots, Colts or Chargers in the AFC. There may be teams like last year's Bears and Saints that pile up a ton of wins without garnering much expectation of a Super Bowl crown.  As in baseball that inferiority has proven itself with the team holding the trophy at the end of the year. Eight of the last ten champions have been AFC teams and you'd be hard pressed to find many predicitions that see that coming to an end this time around.

Is there a shared cause to the struggles of the National League and Conference? At first glance there doesn't appear to be one. Powerful American League teams like the Red Sox, Yankees and Tigers have used their financial advantages to sign free agents and collect top prospects in the draft but the Mets have been one of the most active teams in signing free talent over the past few seasons. In football the Saints have one of the league's best offenses and the Bears possess a fearsome defense but no team has come up with the balanced attack the Steelers, Colts and Patriots have ridden to titles of late. Perhaps it has something to do with the National in each name. When nationalization comes industries still produce, although they tend to provide less exceptional service in the name of giving something to everybody. The American way, however, is for a select few to dominate while creating a gap between them and the huddled masses. As in life, as in sports.